Innovations in Healthcare

A slew of technologies are poised to transform healthcare – machine learning, platforms, robotics, blockchain – and yet, many of the issues facing the industry belie more basic technological challenges, such as robust data collection and analysis. How, then, should we reconcile these disparate advancements in the field? This month we take a look at the hopes and the challenges pulling this fragmented industry in different directions.

Next Edition | February 28, 2018

In This Edition

As tempting as it is to think only of the shiny, exciting advancements that technology provides (here’s looking at you, AI), the reality is that most organizations are in need of more basic digital transformation. Nowhere is this truer than in the healthcare industry, where IT systems that support process improvement and innovation are hard to come by. This article from the Harvard Business Review makes the case for importance of IT management and data interoperability within healthcare and argues that such investments can both lower costs and improve quality.

Data interoperability is one of the most pressing innovations needed in the healthcare industry today but has consistently struggled to catch on. Why? Digital Seminar speaker, Julia Adler-Milstein takes a look at the underlying regulatory and market forces that have resulted in this failure to put standardization and interoperability first.

While still the gold standard in clinical research, randomized controlled trials can be costly, time-consuming, and limited in their scope. This case from Professor Ariel Stern explores the potential of an innovative new approach to clinical trials and cancer therapies – adaptive platform trials. Could this design offer a more flexible and efficient way forward for clinical trials as a whole?

Healthcare companies are lagging behind. Oftentimes, clinical trial research still uses old-school processes like physical protocol binders, paper diaries, and decade old-software. Furthermore, only 5% of the U.S. population participates in clinical research. Andrea Coravos (MBA ’17) argues that the time is ripe for innovative technologies – from virtual trials and digital biomarkers to improved software tools – to transform clinical trial execution and encourage broader participation from the public.

Five years ago, Matt Might’s son Bertrand was dying, stranded on Undiagnosed Island, and suffering from an unnamed and extremely rare genetic disorder. What happened next was a remarkable journey to wellness which included viral blog posts, regenerative worms, one White House mandated initiative, and some arguably shady Amazon orders. In this talk from the Harvard Institute for Applied Computational Science’s Digital Doctor Symposium, Matt Might lays out his bold vision for the future of precision medicine, one that relies on data-driven insights, powerful computation and machine learning, and an invitation to patients to dive feet-first into the scientific method along with their clinicians.

Is crowdsourcing really the proper strategy for tackling a health crisis as severe as the opioid epidemic? We admit to having our doubts. However, this case from Professor Mitch Weiss addresses those underlying skepticisms and offers a fascinating look at what can happen when innovative minds use creative tactics to get disparate stakeholders for a desperate problem in the same room together so they can finally start talking.

Approximately 1.5 to 2 billion people in the world suffer from diabetes, pre-diabetes, or a complication associated with it, and yet more than 90% of them never even get tested. To combat this challenge, Professor Tarun Khanna developed a simple diagnostic device that works with any smartphone in the world. The result is a game-changing innovation that is reshaping the state of diabetes testing, treatment, and data analysis around the globe.

The Health Care Club will be hosting the 15th Annual Harvard Business School Health Care Conference on Saturday, February 3, 2018 from 8:00AM to 6:45PM. This year’s conference will have the theme Heart to Heart Conversations, promoting open panel discussions as the industry faces potential policy reform with a rapid pace of innovation.